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January 8, 2014

Academics Against Mass Surveillance

Posted by Tom Leinster

I’ve posted before about the involvement of mathematicians and computer scientists in the secret services — who, we now know, routinely record your and my daily activities. And in case you’ve somehow missed this whole scandal, you could do a lot worse than starting with this piece by Bruce Schneier in The Atlantic.

Many academics oppose mass surveillance. This probably includes many mathematicians who have helped the NSA and GCHQ in the past. If you’re one of them, you can add your name to a public declaration: Academics Against Mass Surveillance. All you need to do is this:

email us at info (at) academicsagainstsurveillance.net with your name, academic function and university in the subject line.

Given their pivotal role, I hope that many more mathematicians will want to add their names. (There may be some in the pipeline, along with my own: apparently, the organizers can’t keep up with the volume of emails coming in, citing an “overwhelming response”.)

Posted at January 8, 2014 1:37 AM UTC

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